Skip to main content

The Underworld of Car Owners



The political leaders in Delhi are driving the cars of their citizens underground.  Civic Centre on Minto Road is an imposing tower complex that overlooks both Old and New Delhi.  It houses the Municipal Corporations of Delhi, both Old and New.  If you are an ordinary citizen, even if you are driving the costliest car you can afford, you will be asked to park your precious vehicle underground.  All overground parking space is meant for the politicians and their cronies.  Even SUVs bearing an inscription somewhere on or near its number plate claiming allegiance to some politician will get access to the overground parking space.  All the rest will go snaking down to the pit below.

In 1895, H G Wells wrote a novel titled The Time Machine in which the author imagined the future of the capitalist world as divided between the Eloi and the Morlocks, people overground and underground.  The Eloi were the capitalists whose vision was grant enough to send all industries and their working class underground.  Let labour and its polluting waste stay away underground.  The earth is meant for the lords. 

The earth was always meant for the lords.  Look back into history of any country, if you don’t believe me.  Leave out a few exceptions where some kind of socialism (oh, that obnoxious word) was practised.

History can only be repeated because the human species has reached the end of its imagination for putting an end to nauseating repetitions.   History can only be repeated because the human species is driven by the gene of greed primarily.  When history failed to repeat itself, it was when the gene of adventure dominated in some adventurer who wished to see or experience something new.  So Africa was discovered, for example.  And then followed the normal human gene labelling the continent “Dark”.   In the name of the light of progress and development, the continent was subjected to all kinds of plundering.  History repeated itself.

History will continue to repeat itself.  More and more people will be driven underground even without their realising it.  They think they are lucky to get parking space in a crowded city like Delhi, even if it is underground.  All normal human beings consider themselves “lucky” or “fortunate” or “blessed” (by Gods or godmen/godwomen or some spiritual entity) and accept their underworld existence as part of the fortune.  And the rulers continue to conquer the open spaces on the planet.  Conquer the outer spaces.  Conquer the heavens.  And gods are born.
Top post on IndiBlogger.in, the community of Indian Bloggers


Labels:

Comments

  1. Anand MaraladOctober 28, 2014 at 11:52 AM

    At least they are able to create levels,else the not so privileged would have to abandon owning cars (like in few countries of Europe) and the unfortunate ones will have to evacuate the city for those who are blessed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 28, 2014 at 1:01 PM

      That's precisely what I said: it's a blessing!

      Now, look at it another way. In a real democracy, first come first served should have been the policy instead of the hierarchy...

      Delete
  2. Gowthama RajaveluOctober 28, 2014 at 3:36 PM

    Everything is about status in India. And you have explained it with excellent yet simple example Tomichan. Good one!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 28, 2014 at 9:50 PM

      The quest for climbing the ladder of status has become a disease. Our leaders are only adding fuel to the fire.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...
2 comments
Read more

Coffee can be bitter

The dawns of my childhood were redolent of filtered black coffee. We were woken up before the birds started singing in the lush green village landscape outside home. The sun would split the darkness of the eastern sky with its splinter of white radiance much after we children had our filtered coffee with a small lump of jaggery. Take a bite of the jaggery and then a sip of the coffee. Coffee was a ritual in our home back then. Perhaps our parents believed it would jolt our neurons awake and help us absorb our lessons before we set out on the 4-kilometre walk to school after all the morning rituals at home. After high school, when I left home for further studies at a distant place, the ritual of the morning coffee stopped. It resumed a whole decade later when I completed my graduation and took up a teaching job in Shillong. But I had lost my taste for filtered coffee by then; tea took its place. Plain tea without milk – what is known as red tea in most parts of India. Coffee ret...
18 comments
Read more

Relatives and Antidepressants

One of the scenes that remain indelibly etched in my memory is from a novel of Malayalam writer O V Vijayan. Father and little son are on a walk. Father tells son, “Walk carefully, son, otherwise you may fall down.” Son: “What will happen if I fall?” Father: "Relatives will laugh.” I seldom feel comfortable with my relatives. In fact, I don’t feel comfortable in any society, but relatives make it more uneasy. The reason, as I’ve understood, is that your relatives are the last people to see any goodness in you. On the other hand, they are the first ones to discover all your faults. Whenever certain relatives visit, my knees buckle and the blood pressure shoots up. I behave quite awkwardly. They often describe my behaviour as arising from my ego, which used to be a oversized in yesteryear. I had a few such visitors the other day. The problem was particularly compounded by their informing me that they would be arriving by about 3.30 pm and actually reaching at about 7.30 pm. ...
16 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more